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Temporarily silence the startup sound System
Under OS X 10.2.4 (and earlier?), I can bypass the otherwise lovely and glorious sysyem startup chime sound if I first press and hold the F3 key (the "Mute" button -- the one with the speaker icon that has no "sound parentheses" to its right) for a few seconds while I press the power button per usual to boot up my GHz TiBook. Handy when the kids are napping or late at night.

[robg adds: A previous hint explained how that if you mute the sound prior to restarting, it will remain muted at startup ... but this tip is more useful as you don't need to remember to do anything prior to shut down. I tested it on our iBook and it worked as expected; it should probably work on any machine that has a mute key on the keyboard. What's extra nice is that this has no effect on your system sound setting; it will be set at whatever you left it at when you last shut down.]
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Temporarily silence the startup sound | 12 comments | Create New Account
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Temporarily silence the startup sound
Authored by: diskgrinder on Mar 17, '03 11:55:25AM

so if jeff goldblum has to restart his mac in an orbiting alien dreadnought, the BEMs won't hear.

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I am largely flat



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Temporarily silence the startup sound
Authored by: pbx on Mar 17, '03 12:22:00PM

FWIW, it's unlikely that your system version is a factor -- the startup chime is issued before the HD even spins up.



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Temporarily silence the startup sound
Authored by: deleted_user18 on Mar 18, '03 03:59:28AM

Just stop shutting down your Mac every night ;-)

This is Unix, no need for shutdowns (except some software updates). An iMac uses <3W in standby so this is probably less than your TV or your DECT-phone base station.



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Temporarily silence the startup sound
Authored by: robg on Mar 18, '03 11:47:27AM

Ah, but for laptops, there are good reasons to shut down at times ... so this is quite useful when you want to startup in the middle of a red eye flight without waking up the entire plane ;-).

-rob.



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Temporarily silence the startup sound
Authored by: Bernd P. Ziller on Mar 18, '03 03:45:00PM

My flat panel iMac needs about 20W in standby :(



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Temporarily silence the startup sound
Authored by: randybisig on Mar 18, '03 10:22:37AM

Didn't work on my 15" flat-panel iMac running latest OS X using the mute button (next to the eject).

FYI...

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~~~randy~~>



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Temporarily silence the startup sound
Authored by: vajonez on Mar 22, '03 01:51:26PM

Perhaps this is because the laptop keyboards and trackpads are (i think) still ADB devices and not USB.



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Low-tech solution
Authored by: calroth on Mar 19, '03 09:13:47AM

A low-tech solution would be to plug some headphones into the headphone port, or just the plug (bought for a few cents from an electronics shop).



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NO-tech solution
Authored by: BrunoUsesBBEdit on Nov 04, '03 02:37:32PM

I was carrying a laptop to school in the 90's and realized that any sounds would convice an instructor that I was playing video games... even the boot sound. So my solution... I would disasemble my Bic pen (plain old ink pen) and insert the non-writing end into the headphone jack to ensure total silence. Except for the noisy HD and fans. (Those things were pretty loud back in the day.)

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--==<< B r u n o >>==--



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Another possible method...
Authored by: robg on Mar 21, '03 09:36:41AM
Anonymous submitted the following as a hint, but I think it's best listed here as it's closely related to this article:
I thought you might be interested in the information in this thread about silencing the startup chime automatically. It mutes audio on shutdown and restores it when booting.

The author stated that it works reliably for him. For me it only mutes at shutdown. After muting it automatically at shutdown, I have to adjust the audio level manually before a script will work. So I manually goose the slider then run a script to set the exact level. So for me the end result is I never have the chime but I always have to manually adjust the audio after I boot.
I have not tried this myself, but thought others may find it interesting.

-rob.

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Temporarily silence the startup sound
Authored by: jwoolum on Aug 17, '04 08:20:08PM

This will temporarily silence the startup sound:
http://www5e.biglobe.ne.jp/~arcana/StartupSound/index.en.html



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Temporarily silence the startup sound
Authored by: spiderlama on Nov 01, '07 07:12:06PM
A low-tech solution would be to plug some headphones into the headphone port, or just the plug (bought for a few cents from an electronics shop).
At least on my new Aluminium iMac, even if there are headphones plugged in the startup sound comes through the built-in speakers. But it's not the case with my old iBook G4.

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